“Once, maybe twice in a career an agency transcends from being merely another cost line and becomes an extension of the team and a competitive advantage over the competition. Kaizo’s 2010 campaign fits this description.”
Gareth Jones, Head of European Sales, Flip Video

The Flip Video ‘Mum’s the Word’ campaign results highlights:
• Retained no.1 pocket video camera (GFK & Amazon) achieved no.1 camcorder product (Futuresource)
• Coverage and online results were packaged up and used by the sales team to gain successful meetings with key new retailers such as Mothercare and Boots
• The Flip Video Facebook fan page grew from zero to 5,600 in a highly targeted and time efficient way, with our summer campaign competition achieving over 15,000 votes
• Sales increased by 400 per cent during This Morning competition and traffic to the Flip Video UK website increased by 650 per cent
• Over 40,000 page views were received on the Flip Video Mumsnet page
• Over two million pounds of advertising value equivalent was generated during National Family Week
• Overall sales increased by 500 per cent year on year

The challenge
When Flip Video launched in the UK in 2008, the pocket video camera was first to market and enjoyed the success and novelty that this brought. Venture Capitalist backed and with the only marketing spend devoted to PR, all focus was on how campaigns drove sales. Acquired by Cisco in 2009, this focus on measurement via sales and market position did not change. Sales targets did! From a communications perspective, 2010 saw the mass market emergence of directly competitive products from more consumer-facing, retail established brands like Panasonic, Kodak, Apple and Sony.

Based on sales data from Amazon and other retailers, Kaizo identified Mums as our main purchasing audience. Our challenge was how to engage, develop and own UK Mums, drive them into store and ensure that Flip Video, through PR, could not only compete with but also win against our competitors and their mass market media spends. More importantly, how else were we going to create ‘stand out’ for Flip Video with the popular segment and ensure that we remain true to our brand values of authenticity and sharing?

Strategic approach – ‘Mum’s the Word’
The Flip Video brand is about making it easy for anyone to capture and share authentic content and nowhere is this more important than within the family unit. Having defined our key audience, we developed ‘Mum’s the Word’, a campaign aimed at building credibility by demonstrating how the growth in the pocket camcorder sector was changing family life and placing Mums at the centre of this revolution.

We hijacked the issues Mums care about whilst at the same time emphasising Flip’s key messages of being fun and easy to use. Although obtaining traditional media coverage was an integral part of our approach, we knew that online advocacy would be key. Recognising the growth in the number and power of Mummy Bloggers, Mumsnet and Facebook, our tactics involved generating positive word of mouth across blogs, forums and social networks in order to make Flip the most talked about and sought after gadget for Mums.

Campaign Highlights:
Changing lives: how families communicate
2010 saw Kaizo conduct two pieces of family focused research. The first in April (in advance of Cisco’s key summer sales season) focused on the growth of ‘Lifecasting’ and how families were using social media to communicate more and more. Coverage highlights included a double page spread in The Independent and 30 radio interviews. A critical success factor for this campaign was the use of a real Mum as a spokesperson. Katie Hymas, a new young Mum of twins and Mummy Blogger, added credibility and a viewpoint that proved highly attractive to the media.

The second, ‘Changing Bag Chat’, examined the roles of Mums in capturing family memories and sharing this with friends and family. A partnership with Pink Lining, an exclusive changing bag manufacturer, helped us to again recruit real Mums both as spokespeople and also for a lifestyle photoshoot. The campaign launched in November to support the new third generation Flip Video and to drive Christmas sales. Coverage highlights included over 150 national and regional radio hits and a double page feature in ‘You and Your Family’, a free publication sent to 300,000 pregnant women in the UK.

Daytime broadcasting for Mums:
We also recognised the value of mainstream daytime TV placement as a key driver for Christmas sales. A week long partnership with This Morning with 20 different competition VTs resulted in a 400 per cent increase in traffic to Flip’s UK website and a 600per cent increase in sales during that week. We developed the overall theme of creating a ‘living’ photo album in which the camera travels around different static photographs, each one a scene which then comes to life, showing that shooting video is now as easy as taking a photograph.

Visibility on key programmes such as Hollyoaks, You’ve Been Framed, Spooks, Don’t Stop Believing, Got to Dance with Diversity, Strictly Come Dancing, Kirsty and Phil’s Perfect Christmas and Milkshake continued to drive awareness and sales to this key family audience in advance of the Christmas period.

Helping drive awareness using issues close to Mums’ hearts
We partnered with National Family Week on a joint competition hosted by Bebo, the family-orientated social network. Competition entries and awareness were driven via a week long partnership with Heart FM and co-designed advertorials ran across the major national newspapers.

As part of Breast Cancer Care’s awareness month, we worked with ITV2 for the charity’s celebrity trek along the Inca trail, providing Flips to celebrities including Fearne Cotton and Denise Van Outen. During the trip, the celebrities created video diaries on their Flips, with the camcorder being shown on screen in use and the footage integrated into the show.

Harnessing the power of Mums online
As an extension of our existing aggressive mummy blogger outreach, we worked closely with retailer John Lewis to meet with the 40 most influential Mummy bloggers at an exclusive event and demonstrate Flip Video on a one-to-one basis. Mummy bloggers were encouraged to use Flips to video blog from the event itself and were also given Flip Videos to drive longer term coverage. Sponsorship of the MADS (Mummy and Daddy Awards) also reinforced our presence in this space.

With Mumsnet making waves in the year’s news agenda, we knew the site would play a key role in helping us to reach this key audience of Mums. During the vital pre-Christmas season, we invited 13 Mums to review Flip on a platform within the site itself. A link through to Amazon ensured sales were easy to track and a competition resulted in 40,000 page views in just four days.

We created Flip Video’s first UK Facebook community. From June to December 2010, followers grew to 5,600, the demographics of which were 72 per cent women aged 25-50. Members were recruited and engaged via a series of targeted competitions aimed at Mums and families. Our ‘Share Your Summer’ campaign invited people to pitch why they should receive a Flip, with winners then creating and uploading their videos. Votes were cast for the best pitch and the favourite video, with entrants and voters encouraged to share with friends, creating a viral effect. During the ‘Share Your Summer’ campaign, 5,209 people voted, casting over 15,000 votes in total. The Facebook fan page membership grew 134 per cent during this period.

While one of Flip Video’s key selling points is its ease of use, we also felt it important to show this is in a clear and simple way for busy Mums so worked with real Mums to create a series of ‘How to’ videos which are available on the Flip Video UK website.